


The Lions and the Lambs

by stardropdream



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuuma stares straight ahead, not responding. Kamui almost curses him, lets the emotions surge deep in his gut because this is the first time he’s been connected to someone who isn’t Subaru and yet it’s wrong wrong wrong—</p><p>(Pacific Rim AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lions and the Lambs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [songdances](https://archiveofourown.org/users/songdances/gifts).



> Birthday present for Ana, who likes both FK and Pacific Rim, and asked for an AU of it like... back in September. Haha, welp.  
> (Also it's been forever since I watched Pacific Rim so pardon any errors in movie terminology.)

**I.**  
The first thing Kamui remembers is the burn in the back of his mind, the feeling – at once visceral, physical and yet intangibly distant and untouchable – that feeling of his brother being physically and mentally ripped away from him, that stuttering, shattering moment when their minds, still connected, reached out to touch one another – and then Subaru is lost forever. Kamui feels it. It’s the first thing Kamui remembers when he wakes up. 

When he wakes up, he does not know immediately where he is – and it slams into him with startling, dilapidating clarity. His brother, ripped away, his brother—

He looks around wildly for him but of course he is not there. 

He’s in the remains of the jaeger. His first thought, his first fear – still in the Drift. He reaches out, instinctively, for the warming, familiar, calming presence of his brother but Subaru is not there. His breath stutters to a halt and he jerks as if waking up for the first time. The remains of the jaeger. No hum of electricity, no thrill of the movement and the connection. Nothing in the Drift. No Drift at all. 

Kamui tries to breathe. 

What at first he thinks is silence is merely an overlay. When he remembers to breathe, the other sounds come – a howling wind, beyond the walls of the jaeger. And the steady, heady crunch and crush of dismantling. 

When Kamui dislodges himself from the equipment, his body weak, his mind frayed with the severed edges of a missing brother, he stumbles his way out of the gaping hole of the jaeger’s cockpit and tumbles down into a long expanse of snow. 

There is a man there, scrap metal peeled forcefully from the jaeger’s exterior strapped to his back, and he blinks at Kamui in surprise before looking around, up over his shoulder, searching for the second co-pilot – the eyes are the only thing he can see, through the blur of snow and the expanse of the fabric covering the man, fluffed up, scarf tied around his mouth and nose, hood down low over his forehead. The eyes study him next. Kamui closes his eyes because he knows that second co-pilot is not here. 

And then the man pulls a gun from his belt. 

 

 **II.**  
“Who are you?” Kamui asks, when he opens his eyes and stares at the light hanging from the ceiling, then turns his head to see the man from before – he recognizes the eyes. He isn’t sure how he got here, but he has flitted in and out of consciousness for far too long already, and he can only manage a small disbelief that he is not dead, that he has not been killed by the man now studying him. He recognizes the eyes, yes, at once distant but threatening a kind of pitying softness. The scarf has fallen to rest around his throat, and his hair is damp from snow and hanging low over his eyes.

He tilts his head, as if the question is amusing. 

“I’m no one,” he says at last. “Who are you?”

Kamui would smile, if he had the energy or the reminder to do so – but his mind aches, raw and bleeding, searching for someone who no longer exists. He closes his eyes. 

“I’m no one.” 

The beep of his tracker, deep inside his piloting suit, alerts the government to his whereabouts, somewhere on the Northern coast of Hokkaido, which would explain the snow. Even if they did not know where he was, it would not have been hard to find him – this expanse of Japan is barren now, always was in a way, and there is the rotting, desiccating carcass of a kaiju not twenty miles away. 

They find him, and the poachers, those who have already picked the kaiju dry, and went for the jaeger because of those spare parts, because one does not look a gift horse in the mouth. 

A gift horse. Yes. Kamui doesn’t stir from his bed, already at once reassured and disgusted by the steady bleep-bleep of the tracker embedded in the hard metal and sinew-like material that covers his body, that the poachers couldn’t manage to pick dry even as he lies there, utterly defenseless. Broken. His suit is broken. He is broken. His brother is somewhere, broken. He wonders if the poachers who dissect the kaiju for its organs found his brother’s bones. 

Funny, that the poachers would think the abandoned jaeger a prize to be collected, to strip down and carry away – counting Kamui’s misfortune as a fortunate turn of events for them. The death of his brother a means to earn more profit. 

He knows he’s crying. He can’t summon the urge to care, and lies there until he’s collected by the government. 

 

 **III.**  
It’s just as well. The government needs more bodies. The war is not being won. Kamui doubts as much, and also finds that he no longer cares – the entire reason he was defending Earth is gone now. A world where he and his brother can live. 

He can’t even be granted that much anymore. 

It’s just as well. Time is moving backwards for him – it’s as if he’s in the Drift even when he’s not, reliving the memories. First the last moments, the way Subaru would have tried to snap his eyes to Kamui, only for Kamui’s sync to turn his face away in a mimicry of the movements. The way Subaru would say his name, both in voice and in Drift. The way he would be torn away from the apparatus, not even managing to scream, before he was gone – and Kamui would feel every moment until the little flame of his brother’s life flickered out. 

And then the moments would come beyond that – months ago, when they celebrated their birthday. Months beyond that, when they did nothing but sit together while Subaru reads, and Kamui watches outside for any sign of – anything, really. 

And then years beyond that, children, walking together, holding hands and not even aware of what will happen years from then. 

And years before that, when the first kaiju strikes, and they stumble down the streets of Tokyo, never once refusing to let go, losing footing, losing shoes, losing everything except each other – always each other.

Years before that, when life is peaceful and they are children and nothing is tragic or painful or difficult. When everything was as it should be.

It is as if Kamui is in the Drift, fraying edges of the connection still lingering, searching for someone to connect to. 

 

 **IV.**  
When he wakes up, declared fully ‘healed’, as if that is something that can be quantified – the first thing he sees is the poacher from before. He stares at him, turns his head, and then looks back again. He’s still there.

The man smiles at him. Kamui doesn’t respond, just blinks. Then he closes his eyes, sighs out, and falls back into the deep, regretful sleep, where he can see his brother and his green eyes, smiling and warm and healthy and not infinitely away from him. 

“Why are you here?” he asks, when he emerges from that fitful sleep and sees the man still stays there. 

He shrugs. “They need more bodies in the field.” 

It isn’t the full answer and Kamui does not know how long he has drifted in and out, but seeing the man suddenly only enrages Kamui – reminds him, bitterly, of what he has lost. This man, who would benefit and profit from Kamui’s lose.

He is from the bed before he even realizes, hand to the man’s throat, throwing him down. The man falls, without hazard, landing with a thud on his back but quickly moving away again, legs shifting out from under him, kicking hard into Kamui’s solar plexus and shoving him away as he gets back to his feet easily, looking at him in surprise over his glasses. And Kamui moves in again, faster this time, his entire body tense like a bow, enraged, grieving, and he does not cry this time, only bottles that anger and hurt and despair into a distilled rage that boils and roils at the center of his gut. And he attacks. 

But he’s met head-on, each slam of his fist, kick of his foot, met with equal force, counter-balancing, pivoting around him. 

“I’m Fuuma,” the man says, as if it matters. 

Kamui attacks him further. Something sparks inside him and he ignores it, focuses only on destroying, on finishing, on tearing down. 

Destruction. 

 

 **V.**  
“No,” Kamui says before the rest of the words can be finished, and his commanding officer frowns at him in distaste, but he doesn’t care. “We aren’t Drift compatible.” 

What he means to say is _he’s not Subaru._ But no one would accept this, after so many years that have passed. 

He doesn’t care. Years have passed and still Subaru’s absence smarts. Still he turns as if to speak to him, still he reaches out for him, still he searches for him – he could find him in the Drift, he knows, but for someone else to see what’s only meant for him is something that Kamui cannot bear. 

He has seen pilots come and go. He has trained where necessary, searching for any way to get some connection to what he has lost – he does not miss the jaeger, he does not miss the fighting. He misses his brother, their connection, the way they worked together seamlessly across the ocean. Always together. Always playing off one another. No secrets between them, their memories and minds joined in a way even the best drift partners couldn’t even begin to dream of achieving. 

He remembers the poacher – _Fuuma_ he thinks with distaste – and his disregard for everything that the alliance stands for. He remembers their fight – the ones that followed afterward, and still Fuuma would smile at him as if it were nothing, as if Kamui hadn’t lost his entire world that day years ago. That Fuuma apparently wants to be a pilot now, after years assembling jaegers instead of poaching them, doesn’t matter to Kamui. 

“I won’t,” Kamui says, petulant, and knows he’s pushing his luck.

It only takes for it to become a direct order before Kamui has no choice, and he stews in his anger. But he accepts it. Inevitability. The wires cross and fray and Kamui stands, petulant still, angered, unrecovering. 

Fuuma smiles at him, but it’s stilted and distant – amused and unamused at once. Fake. 

“Just keep focused,” Kamui growls out.

 

 **VI.**  
He hears the alarms. He hears the control tower starting to stir unhappily, chirping in Kamui’s ear. He feels that urgency. He knows it’s important. He knows it’s important to stop it all – he knows that he can’t let it go on. And yet, and yet—

Fuuma stares straight ahead, not responding. 

Kamui almost curses him, lets the emotions surge deep in his gut because this is the first time he’s been connected to someone who isn’t Subaru and yet it’s wrong wrong wrong—

And he dives down deep into the Drift, shifting through Fuuma’s memories, searching for him through the years and years that stretch out between them. He searches for something about kaiju, the moment that the kaiju first appeared, the moment Fuuma’s home would have been destroyed. He’s searching for destruction, noise, crumbling, tears, screaming – he’s searching for anything like that.

Instead, he finds Fuuma in silence. A long expanse of a hallway, shadows across the wall. Long, still, silence. 

Fuuma stands, fully in gear, peering into a room. Kamui walks to him, reaches out to him, searches for the source of his trauma, for a way to disconnect him, still half-expecting that, at any moment, a kaiju will shriek in the distance – give some kind of warning as to why this is where Fuuma disappears down the rabbit hole, disconnected and all-too-connected to the Drift. 

But what Kamui sees is this—

A little boy, alone, not crying anymore, curled into himself. 

This is what Kamui sees—

The Fuuma he’s met standing there, watching the mirror of himself, and his shoulder bend a little, as if he, too, will curl into himself. 

And there’s no indication that this should be the trauma, that this should be the worst memory—

And then a man – a young man – enters the room and the little boy on the floor whispers a small, pathetic _nii-san_ and suddenly the adult Fuuma is snapping his eyes up and focusing on Kamui, at once not seeing him and seeing too much of him. 

And then Fuuma shoves him back—

And Kamui crashes through the memories—

Sees them flash by him—

A hand touching him too gently to be true, the tug of fingers through his hair yanking back, the shouts and cries and pleas, the chuckles that are dark and low and hissing into an ear – pleased by the reactions, searching for more, the small smile of a woman who passes through the doors at night but is never around, the kaiju slamming into Tokyo and crushing half the city in its wake—

The boy standing in the middle of the road, staring up as the kaiju approaches, waiting for it to kill him, because then, at least, there will be peace, there will be freedom, there will be something that might mean his family will miss him—

And Kamui is crashing and falling and drifting into the Drift in a way that is disorienting, when his memories are fragmenting and bisecting with Fuuma’s, integrating and bouncing off one another—

Holding his brother’s hand and running from the kaiju—

Seeking his older brother’s eyes out on the road, waiting for him to care he’s about to die—

Reaching for his brother’s hand as he’s ripped away from him and torn apart by the kaiju—

Searching for something that will stifle the stagnating stillness inside of him, as the kaiju rips apart Tokyo for the third time—

There are birthdays and faces both familiar and opaque and screaming and laughter and smiles—

Far too many smiles—

“Come back,” Kamui manages to say as he drifts through the Drift, reaching out and grasping Fuuma’s shoulder, who has gone back to staring back into the void of memories, seeing something beyond Kamui’s shoulder. His voice breaks into the silence. “Come _back._ ” 

Fuuma’s gaze snaps to his, opaque and distant. 

Kamui says again, “Come back.” 

Fuuma stares at him, and there’s a flicker in his eye for half a moment – there and gone again.

“Come back already,” Kamui says and keeps saying it until, finally, the light in Fuuma’s eyes grows, and, finally, the system disconnects and they are cloaked in the darkness of the piloting terminal. Kamui can hear the sounds beyond the jaeger, of the defense team streamlining and system-checking. 

Fuuma is still watching him. 

And then his expression clouds over and he looks away, for once the smile gone from his face. “Forget everything you just saw.” 

Kamui nods, but he knows he won’t be able to forget. 

 

 **VII.**  
They’re still training – Fuuma has taken to only studying his moves and his defenses, never once reconnecting with the jaeger. The powers that be are eager to get him back into the system, but he doesn’t seem keen on listening, insisting on building his endurance and his core strength. 

Kamui knows it’s because since the first time, Fuuma has disappeared chasing the rabbit twice more, and it was Kamui who had to call him back again. Fuuma refuses to train with anyone else – and no one else is compatible enough. Kamui isn’t particularly eager to return to the system, either, not eager for Fuuma to gaze at his brother’s face in the Drift – those memories are for him only.

Fuuma’s memories are a jumble and a disorientation inside Kamui’s own mind. They gaze at one another’s memories in those three times together and each time there’s that deep sense – bone-deep, skin-crawling – that it’s for _me_ not _you._ This sparking protectiveness that bleeds over between them – do not look here. 

Do not look.

And yet that’s all they can do. 

It’s almost overwhelming the way that it sinks into their skin, burrows into their marrow. It’s there – and it won’t go away. 

So Fuuma trains, slamming his body down into the punching bags, into the rolling mats, his fists bruising from the force of his own avoidance – he doesn’t so much as glance at the jaegers. Kamui begins to wonder if Fuuma will ever look at them again, if he will ever be willing to try, if he will ever be willing to open and let his mind connect, slide into the Drift and experience his own memories tumbling up on top of one another, broken image over broken image, and mixed, intertwined, with the fluttering broken memories of Kamui’s own past. 

It isn’t a pleasant thought, and Kamui does his best not to focus on it, but it’s there nevertheless, and it fluctuates in the back of Kamui’s own mind – how deeply and intimately this man knows him now, without them ever having decided that would be the case, without them ever actually discussing what they saw – Fuuma’s broken family is something that Kamui at once knows intimately and yet does not understand, and Kamui wonders if seeing Kamui’s own memories of a beloved brother leaves him feeling cold. 

Kamui, of course, does not ask, will never ask – he doesn’t want to know and it isn’t his business anyway. 

 

 **VIII.**  
Fuuma slams into him roughly, Kamui feels the shoulder connect to the stomach and the air rushes out of him and he sprawls out across the floor, gasping for breath. He recovers a moment later, curling into himself and rocking onto his feet, meeting the slam of Fuuma’s heel with two hands to block, and pushes Fuuma back, hard enough that he stumbles—

And he is there to meet him—

And he slams him up against the wall, eyes dark and full of promise and Fuuma meets his gaze and does not back down—

And perhaps he’s just stubborn, always been stubborn – too stubborn, perhaps.

He kisses Fuuma like the world is ending, because it is and why does it even matter that the world is torn apart more and more by those kaiju? Why should it matter – fingers curling tight into the shirts dampened with exercise and sweat and the air too thick to breathe. 

He bites down hard on Fuuma’s lip, because those memories that aren’t his own but still house in his mind tell him that what Fuuma wants more than anything is that physical reminder that he is desired—

And Kamui can give that to him. 

And Fuuma holds him with deceptive gentleness, his fingers holding tight enough to bruise but every other part of him soft edges as he kisses him back – because Kamui knows Fuuma houses memories that are not his own that tell him that Kamui only wants to feel something again, without it ever having to hurt. 

So they kiss, and Fuuma lets Kamui dominate him. 

 

 **IX.**  
The world is far away, but they keep moving. They keep moving, and there are the sparks between them – and Kamui knows that there is no one else who will be compatible with him, in the Drift or beyond, and yet—

And yet they do not stray close to that. Cannot. 

Too broken now.

 

 **X.**  
Fuuma cradles his face as if he is precious, as if he will break. Kamui fists his fingers in hard against his shoulder, cutting half-moon cuts from his nails into the flesh there. Fuuma closes his eyes, breathes out. 

And the spark continues.


End file.
